CHAPTER FOURTEEN #2
I marveled for what had to be the millionth time at the structure of his body, the definition in each muscle. But I couldn’t help but wince several times as my eyes landed on his wounds, some bandaged and some too large to be covered fully. Particularly the one on his leg.
“I’m fine,” he said quietly as if reading my thoughts.
Then his boxers slipped past his thighs.
My breath caught in my throat.
With that last barrier gone, I could now confirm that every single inch of him was perfect. And seeing the effect that I had on him, how he was visibly aching for me…it made me ache in turn. With an intensity I had never felt before.
Eventually my gaze drifted back up to his.
As our eyes locked, I imagined that the glazed look in his must have been mirrored in my own.
He climbed back onto the bed, and I raised up to kiss him.
But he resumed the same position, kneeling between my legs.
The corner of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. Then he lowered his head.
What happened next was something I had fantasized about endlessly but had never experienced.
Which probably said a lot about the two men I had chosen to share my body with in the past. But all thoughts of them were long gone at the first touch of Kieran’s lips.
His tongue. Touches that consumed every thought, every nerve, every part of me.
There was no room in my mind for self-consciousness.
There was no room in my mind for anything.
Anything except Kieran.
The waves of sensation came in all different forms—fast and slow, rough and gentle, abrupt and lingering. Meanwhile, his fingertips grazed the outside of my thighs. Gripped my hips. Slid between my legs to caress me in the same way his mouth did.
Soon it was difficult to be still. My legs trembled. I was grasping the bedsheets. Grasping for something. Anything.
I had found release on my own before, but that’s all that it was—release. Like scratching an itch or eating when hungry. What was building in me now was something else. Something sweet and deep and all-consuming.
“Kieran.” I didn’t know what I wanted, what I needed. But I pleaded all the same.
I felt his body tense against me, his grip on my hips tightening. “I love the way you say my name,” he murmured, the words and the shuddering breath that followed vibrating against my skin.
“Kieran.” I was desperate now. The pressure almost unbearable.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Yeah, Maila, just like that.”
Our eyes met, and his were wide. Watching me unflinchingly. Expectantly.
Then I understood why, as he used his mouth and fingers to apply the perfect amount of pressure. My whole body spasmed. Seized. Ignited.
The tidal wave of pleasure that tore through me was something I couldn’t have dreamed of. Couldn’t have known my body was even capable of. Far away, I heard a cry erupt from me. Something primal. It must have echoed through the room. Through the living quarters. Through all of Cyllene.
But I was somewhere else. In another world.
After some time, my mind drifted back. My senses slowly awakened. Aftershocks of pleasure radiated through me.
I realized my eyes were closed, and with an immense amount of effort, I opened them.
Kieran was still kneeling there, sitting back on his heels, his mouth hanging open. He dragged the back of his arm across it. The light in the room had increased only slightly with the rising sun, but there was no mistaking the look in his eyes.
They were wild. And molten silver.
“So that’s what that’s like then,” I said to fill the silence. The intensity of his stare was making me feel bare in a different way, beyond the physical.
“What do you mean?” His voice sound strangled.
“I mean…” I don’t know why I let the words fall away. There was nothing to be ashamed about. I swallowed. “That’s the first time someone’s ever done that for me.”
Kieran’s eyes slammed shut, and his hand dropped to grip himself.
A minute passed in which his body remained absolutely rigid.
When he finally spoke, it was with a shuddering breath.
“I don’t get this effect you have on me.
You tell me something like that, all shy and embarrassed-looking, and how do I react?
I almost blow my load like a damn teenager. ”
I grinned. “I would’ve loved to watch that.”
He hissed, but there was a smile playing at his lips, too. “Stop saying shit like that so I can calm down.”
Eventually, he moved back up the bed, lowering himself onto me.
When he kissed me, I expected it to be frantic again.
But instead, it was painfully tender. He pressed a kiss to my chin, my cheek, my eye.
He kissed me on the nose, and I was so surprised that I couldn’t hold back a quiet chuckle.
Then he moved to the other side of my face to repeat the kisses again.
He raised up on his elbows then, gazing down at me. A flurry of emotions crossed his face, too fast for me to pinpoint. I stared back at him, relishing the feeling of being skin-to-skin. Everything still. Like we were the only two people in the world.
Something bloomed in me then.
No, it had always been there. Waiting patiently for me to figure it out.
I wanted Kieran.
Not just his body. I wanted all of him. Every part of him. The good and the bad.
I was already floating through a haze of euphoria, but my acknowledgment and acceptance of this settled over me like a warm blanket on a cold day, bringing its own brand of elation.
I ran my fingertips gently down his back. Beginning with his neck, feeling the muscles of his shoulders flex beneath my hands, trailing down his spine. When I moved to do the same to his front, he closed his eyes. I moved so just my fingernails grazed his chest, his abdomen. I let them trail lower.
When the skin of my fingertips finally drifted over the length of him, he inhaled sharply.
I began to move rhythmically, letting his face, his breaths, the very feel of him in my hand guide me in what he liked. It wasn’t long before every stroke was drawing a low groan from his throat.
I tightened my grip.
“Fuck,” he choked out. I felt it like a physical touch, reverberating through my body.
It was an intoxicating cycle—the more I massaged him, the louder he groaned, and the more it felt like those temporarily stilled waters were beginning to thrash again. Building momentum. Readying to come crashing through me once more.
Gently, he caught my wrist in his hand. When he opened his eyes, they were the color of smoke.
“Did that not feel good?” I asked.
“It felt too good,” he breathed.
I didn’t understand what he meant at first. But then he shifted his body, moving so that we were perfectly parallel to one another. He ground his hips against mine. Except this time, there was nothing between us. Just the friction of skin against skin. A preview of what was to come.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asked hoarsely.
“Yes,” I replied without hesitation. “I trust you.”
His eyes widened, and he blinked several times as if waking from sleep. Then he lifted his body, creating space between us. Something had changed in his face, enough that I raised up on my elbows.
“Maila,” he whispered between shaky breaths. His voice was so soft that it took me a moment to realize he had spoken. “Before we do this, there’s something else we need to talk about.”
I blinked, too. My logical mind taking the reins again. “Right,” I said. “Um…I don’t take anything.”
He tilted his head. “What?”
“Contraception,” I said, wincing. “We have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it here, because The Council wants us to reproduce. They don’t say that that’s the reason, but it obviously is.
And I haven’t gone through that whole process because…
well…I haven’t had a need for it in a long time.
” One of these days, I was going to stop giving him ammunition to say that I was naive. But apparently today wasn’t that day.
He chuckled, gently shaking the both of us in the areas where our bodies still touched. “You’re fine, Maila. I have a brew from Sigrid that I drink.”
“Oh, good.” I reached for his face, letting my fingertips graze the edge of his cheekbone, beside those eyes. Those beautiful silver eyes.
Kieran shook his head, as if clearing it. “Sorry, that’s not what I was referring to. There’s something else that I need to tell you.”
“Can it wait?” It was a joke. Sort of.
Maybe it was the raw need in my voice, or maybe it was something else. But I watched the silver of his eyes liquify in front of me, melting me along with it. “Yes.” His voice was rough as he lowered his face back to mine. “It can wait.”
Everything was still. Silent. His lips softly grazed mine again. And in that same moment, there was sudden pressure and a hint of pain as he began to move into me slowly, giving my body time to adjust. Taking me inch by inch, until he was sheathed to the hilt.
The fullness of him was overwhelming.
“Doing okay?” His voice was strained.
“Better than okay,” I breathed, the corner of my mouth turning up at his concern for me.
“Perfect.” His words were an exhale. The tension dissipated from his shoulders as he began to move.
The first thrust pulled a gasp from me. And then I was meeting each roll of his hips, the two of us moving at a rhythm that was slow and steady and forced me to languish in every burst of pleasure that he coaxed out of me.
“You feel so fucking good,” he murmured between kisses that were as agonizingly and gloriously slow as our pace. He lowered his lips to my neck, and my head lolled, eyes slipping closed.
Every part of me was sensitive from my climax, every nerve standing on edge.
It wasn’t long before I was about to break again.
My nails dug into his back, causing him to groan against my neck.
My hips ground urgently against his, trying to go faster, desperate for that pleasure he had given me before.
“You want it harder?” The challenge in his voice had me opening my eyes, meeting his gaze.
Suddenly, it wasn’t about my own release anymore. I wanted to see him lose himself fully, like he had seen from me.
“Yes, please,” I said sweetly and raised up.
He let me roll him over, and then I was astride him.
The angle allowed me to feel him even more deeply than before.
I moved harder, faster, and he met me at each crest with a force that took my breath away.
I wanted more of him. All of him. And I knew he was willing to give it to me.
The skin of my palms tingled against the muscles of his neck, and a strange sensation snaked through my veins. I felt…invigorated.
I felt powerful.
His hands disappeared from my hips, reaching instead to unlace my fingers and cradle them gently between us. “Easy,” he breathed, pressing a kiss to my clasped hands.
“What was –” I couldn’t get the words out.
They were erased. Obliterated. Along with all other semblance of thought as my body launched without preamble into another shattering release.
The cry that tore out of my body was his name, and all I could do was hold onto him as sharp waves of pleasure ripped through me.
His answering groan was something I wanted to capture and replay over and over again, the sound thick with need, with pleasure, and with the sound of my name.
Then he was bucking wildly, frantically. Ravenously.
Seeing him like that pulled me out of the limp haze of my orgasm.
I started matching him thrust for thrust, riding him with an urgency that had us both gasping for breath.
My hands untangled from his, and they joined my mouth in exploring every part of him, every surface of his skin within reach.
I let my teeth graze the rounded muscle of his trap, and he cursed under his breath.
I barely recognized my own voice when I ordered, “Let go, Kieran. Let go for me.”
As if on command, I felt him thicken inside me. Then my name tore from his throat in a roar.
For a split second, as I felt him throbbing with release, it was like a hurricane was unleashed in my bedroom. Through the ecstasy of watching him, I was vaguely aware of my hair whipping against the both of us. The candles on my desk tipping. The glass of my window and balcony door rattling.
And then we were collapsed in a heap on the bed, me still straddling him. My head bouncing with the heaving rise and fall of his chest. My own breaths still coming just as fast.
“You’re incredible,” he whispered against my hair.
There was so much that I wanted to say to him.
But I didn’t have time to respond. Because in the next moment, there was a deafening crash. Kieran and I leapt from the bed at the same time, feet slamming the floor as we readied for fight or flight.
Then the fight left me just as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by a familiar sense of terror as once again, there were Enforcers in my home. Five of them, to be exact.
Leading the pack was Zander.